WHAT IF YOU WANTED TO EXPEL RUSSIAN SPIES BUT DIDN’T HAVE ANY? – The dilemma our cousins across the pond face as they try to exercise solidarity with 23 other countries, which between them have so far expelled 130 Russian spies:

“We have done a check in New Zealand. We don’t have Russian undeclared intelligence officers here,” New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on radio station RNZ Tuesday. “If we did, we would expel them.”

Maybe in the spirit of trans-Tasman cooperation Australia could lend New Zealand some of our own excess Russian spies for Ardern to expel. What’s the ANZAC bond for, after all, if not for standing shoulder to shoulder with our geopolitically unimportant cousins in the hour of need?

Ardern said she was not surprised there were no Russian operatives in her country, given the “range of international interests” with which Moscow could be concerned.

“Does it surprise me New Zealand is not top of their list? No, actually,” she said.